


Skywalker Lost

by Oneringtohallowsend



Series: The Freeborn Son 'verse [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Luke is having identity issues, Tatooine Slave Culture, and mercy killings, isn't pretty folks, there are mentions of suicide, this is post-ESB, yes this is in the freeborn son universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 23:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11218293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oneringtohallowsend/pseuds/Oneringtohallowsend
Summary: Uncle Owen had warned him. Yoda had warned him.  Ben had whispered warnings. He hadn't listened because he thought he knew better. He hadn't. They'd been right. His reflection was a stranger. His last name, an old source of pride, had become a dagger embedded into his heart. The Freeborn Son was the child of a monster. His father was a traitor. A slaver. His father was Darth Vader.





	Skywalker Lost

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose this could be considered a sequel. I don't know. Let me know what you think!

_In and out, in and out, in and out_. Each breath pulled at his ribs and caused his chest to ache with searing pain. He was standing in front of a mirror in the fresher aboard Home One. His hands still shaking, his face and body covered in bruises. His hair was damp with sweat and grime. He didn’t recognize himself. He look at his reflection and saw a stranger. His arm was wrapped in bacta patches and completely missing his hand. It didn’t feel real. He kept trying to reach for things with it only to realize once again that his hand was gone.  His lightsaber too. His father’s lightsaber. His father….

 Why had no one ever told him? The faces his family made more sense now. His aunt’s worried look whenever he mentioned wishing he could have met his father. His uncle’s angry and broken voice saying you’re just like your father. Back then it had filled him with pride. His father had become a freed man, a jedi, and an intangible dream to Luke’s younger self. The type of man a son could aspire to be.  His father had been the type of man who carried his name with pride and rose above his humble and enslaved beginning. It was all a lie. His father--Vader. He had somehow thrown it all away. He had gone from slave to slaver and those two warring images of who is father was caused tears to roll down his face.

He backed away from the counter, away from his reflection, and away from the flashing images in his mind. His back hit the wall of the fresher and with a hiss of pain he slid down the wall. His body, despite the aches and pains, felt numb. The world didn’t seem real anymore despite the vividness of color and noise that bombarded his senses. 

“My name is Luke Skywalker,” his voice trembled and broke. That name he had worn it with such childish pride. “I am the freeborn son of a freeman from a family of slaves.  My name is Luke Skywalker I am the freeborn son of….” The words died in his throat choking him. The mantra no longer felt right on his tongue. It felt like a lie. He was a lie.

He didn’t know what had happened to his father. Ben had yet to show up and explain why he had lied. Darth Vader hadn’t killed his father. His father was Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were synonyms for the same sentient being that had terrorized and enslaved the galaxy. He wondered briefly if Ben hadn’t been able to face that truth himself. Maybe Ben couldn’t face the fact that his friend was a monster and capable of so much evil. He could understand that. The image of who he had dreamed his father to be and the devastating reality were two vastly different concepts that he couldn’t bring together. He couldn’t make the images fit.

He had lost something when he had gained the truth. Innocence?  Maybe.  His sense of self? Definitely. He found he missed his home. He missed Tatooine. He missed the heat of the suns and the sand beneath his feet. He missed hearing his aunt sing while she cooked. He missed his uncle who was always so worried about him. He missed performing surgeries. He missed the transports. He wanted to go home. To go back to the way things were but he couldn’t. His home was gone. His family was lost to the sands. His legacy was tattered. He rubbed his chest as if that would take away the ache his heart felt. His fingers finding the raised scars that rested on both sides of his chest.  On the left side he knew there were over two dozen small lines that had been purposefully carved into his skin. On the right side of his chest were scars in the shape of small circles. They were a physical reminder of his role in the Network and now an anchor that he could buoy himself too.

Nobody but the healers had seen them since he joined the Rebellion. He had not consciously decided to hide them from people but the act of doing so was ingrained in him from Tatooine. He wouldn’t know where to start anyway. Biggs had been the only one who knew and understood but he had been from Tatooine and a member of the Network himself. Wedge, was a Corellian, who had come from a middle to upper class household. Leia was a damn princess from the core. Slavery hadn’t ever touched their lives. He knew they didn’t agree with it. The empire had built itself off the backs and lives of slaves. His friends valued the sentience and free will of other beings but they had never seen that sentience disregarded and the ability to choose stripped away without a second thought. 

They had never felt the blood and gore of a dear friend dry on their faces or felt the ringing in their ears from the explosion of a chip. They had never seen a child tied to a whipping post with long slices of split skin littered on their back as a crowd jeered, a mother wept, and the twin suns baked them all.  They had never seen a girl of 15 bash her newborn baby’s head in because her master was planning on selling it in the morning. They had never seen a slave willingly step over the line just so the suffering could end. They had lived in a culture that survived on the subjugation and degradation of sentient beings and where such behavior was not only deemed acceptable but expected. They hadn’t lived in a world where words always had two meanings. They had never learned how to read the space between what is said and was is left unsaid.

No. They would not understand why he let people cut into him. Why he had trusted desperate beings to not wound or kill him. They would not understand that the first time he had received a mark he had been nine years old. The knife the girl had used had still been covered in her own blood when she had dug it into his skin. They would not understand why the girl had proceeded to rub sand into the wound. They would not understand the sacredness of the ritual or the fact that it was rooted in tradition that spanned back generations between the liberated and the liberators. The liberated who had to put blind faith into an unknown system filled with unknown variables in the hopes of getting out alive and free. The liberated who had to trust that the person transporting or cutting into their skin would not take advantage of their vulnerability. It was only fair that the liberators extended a small amount of that trust back to those they helped; by letting the newly freed cut lines into their skin reminiscent of their own chip scars or the round circles showing a successful and completed transport.  Trust required trust. That’s how people survived back home. That’s how he had survived. When any of the participants in the Network could be killed for the association people tended to not rat each other out. It would just be mutually assured destruction. They trusted in that system and there hadn’t been a failure of it in generations.

His friends looked at him and saw their hero, the hotshot pilot who destroyed the death star, the Jedi in training, and the son of the Hero with No Fear. They didn’t know Anakin Skywalker had been a slave in his early life. They didn’t know that Skywalker was synonymous with slavery. They didn’t know that Luke had felt the life of each person aboard the death star snuff out as it was destroyed. They didn’t know that he, in those briefest of moments, had felt their terror and confusion.  They didn’t know Anakin Skywalker had transformed from Jedi Hero to an Imperial Sith Lord. They didn’t know he, himself, was sith-spawn. If they did they would be forced to tell High Command and then High Command would kick him out or they would kill him. It would be the safest way to make sure he didn’t threaten the Alliance’s operations. They would know he would not fight the decision not to the point of hurting others, hurting his friends. That fact would make them feel a flicker of doubt and regret but it wouldn’t change a single thing. Oh, Leia, Chewie, and Wedge would be upset and try to fight the decision but they would be silenced because they would see it was the only way.

He didn’t know who he was anymore. He didn’t know if he ever would know again. His future was uncertain, his past smeared like fresh paint, and his present felt like a dark and lonely nightmare. How foolish he had been to want to get off his childhood planet. How kriffing stupid he had been. He had been safe. His uncle had been right so long ago when Luke had smarted off about leaving one day and never coming back. His uncle had gone from angry to sad in the span of mere seconds. He had seemed so old and tired like a krayt dragon rested on his shoulders. Owen had just shook his head and told him, “When you leave this planet you won’t like what you find and by that point it will be too late to ever come back.” He’d been so naive thinking his uncle was being selfish and trying to hold him back. How he wished he could go back and slap himself upside the head and then hug his uncle and beg forgiveness.

A beeping dragged him out of the prison that was his own mind and back into the moment. He fumbled for the comm unit shoved into the pocket of his pants.

“Skywalker.” The name tasted like ash on his tongue and left a sour taste in his mouth.

“Skywalker, the princess is requesting all of rogue squadron to the briefing room.” He didn’t recognize the voice but that wasn’t surprising. People died quite often in the Rebellion. People were replaced. What was surprising is that they wanted him to attend a meeting with his squad.

“I haven’t been cleared from medical yet. I’m still missing a hand.” There was a dark humor that colored his voice and he sensed the other man’s unease by the silence that lasted moments longer than it should have.

“I know, sir. She still requests that you are there.” Luke sighed and hung his head.

“I’ll be there in fifteen.” He clicked the comm off without waiting for a reply. He stood up slowly and painfully a whimper breaking past his lips.

He was greeted with the sight of his reflection. He still did not recognize the person staring back at him. He still didn’t know what he would become. He had lived his whole life as a son who wanted to be just like the father he had never met. Now he was a son who was afraid that his uncle, aunt, Obi-Wan, and Yoda had been right all along. He was afraid that there was too much of his father in him. He’d always thought they’d meant Anakin Skywalker. Now he knew. They saw too much of Darth Vader in him. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was destined to follow in Vader’s steps. To lose himself to the darkness, the anger, the hate that he had felt more often than not in his life. He did not want to be a monster. He’d just wanted to be a pilot and to see the galaxy as his father had done. Maybe Skywalker’s were not meant for freedom. Maybe they went mad with the freedom. Maybe they got drunk on the power of it until they drowned and drug everyone near them down with them.

He closed his eyes and took a fortifying breath in and out. Opening his eyes he turned away from his reflection and grabbed his shirt off the rack he’d placed it on. Slipping it over his head, ignoring the pain and protest of his muscles, he walked out of the refresher.

His name was Luke Skywalker and he might not be sure what that fully meant anymore but he had a job to do. He had a rebellion to fight. He had an empire to beat. He wasn’t ready to drown just yet. At least that’s what he told himself. One day he might just believe it.


End file.
